Appeal 2007-1416
Application 09/881,791
to a person of ordinary skill in the art in question at the time of the invention,
i.e., as of the effective filing date of the patent application." Id. at 1313, 75
USPQ2d at 1326.
Laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas are excluded
from patent protection. Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 185, 209 USPQ 1,
7 (1981).
The test for statutory subject matter is whether the claimed subject
matter is directed to a “practical application,” i.e., whether it is applied to
produce “a useful, concrete and tangible result.” See State St. Bank & Trust
Co. v. Signature Fin. Group, Inc., 149 F.3d 1368, 1373, 47 USPQ2d 1596,
1601 (Fed. Cir. 1998).
ANALYSIS
Examiner has presented a prima facie case for the rejection of all
claims 1 to 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 in view of the teachings of Pavela, and
the definition of “application program interface” in the Microsoft Press
Computer Dictionary (MPCD). (Answer, pages 2 to 8; Final Rejection
6/16/05 pages 3 to 9). The MPCD is merely used to substantiate that an
“application program interface” mentioned in the claims (e.g. claim 1) is a
(part of a) computer program. We do not find this point to be in dispute
(Brief 12.) We will therefore concentrate on the analysis of the Pavela
reference.
In response to the Examiner’s prima facie case, Appellants have
raised a number of arguments. Appellants contend “the source file of Pavela
does not teach the specification of a computer program as recited in claim 1.
Also, the source file of Pavela does not include sentences describing the
computer program. It should be understood that the tags present within the
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